16 IDLEHURST : 



the Home Counties ; now that a canopy of soot 

 hangs over a hundred square miles of flues, and 

 streams away on the wind like a vast black flag, they 

 call it " blight," and think it brings the caterpillars 

 to the apple trees. In fine, bright weather, the north 

 wind must blow the smoke up and away into space, 

 for then it hardly reaches us at Arnington ; but, 

 when the air is damp and heavy and the clouds keep 

 down, two hours of north wind bring us the brown 

 haze and unmistakable smell. Many people ridicule 

 the idea that smoke can travel so far ; but no one 

 who has seen the smoke of a gorse-fire carried in a 

 horizontal bar half over a county on a still after- 

 noon, or watched the twenty-mile streak of smoke 

 from a -liner in the Channel, or made observations 

 upon the graduated darkness which sometimes covers 

 the forty miles between Arnington and Hyde Park 

 Corner, will have much doubt about the cause of the 

 plague. The meteor comes on with definite front 

 and flanks ; if the wind is a little across, here in the 

 sunshine we can see the hills east or west of Arnington 

 blotted out by the drifting veil ; it lowers the tem- 

 perature as it comes, and fills the nostrils with a tang 

 of soot and sulphur; in certain conjunctions with 

 sleet-squalls or thundery cloud it can produce almost 

 appalling effects of colour and gloom. Animal life 



